CUTTING OUT GERMAN TRADE.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 160, 4 August 1916, Page 3

CUTTING OUT GERMAN TRADE.

AUSTRALIAN EXPERIMENTS GERMAN FAKED FORMULA. THE SECRET UNRAVELLED. Pyrogallol, and amidol used in developing'. photographic plates and pr.nts. had before the war been exclusively imported from Germany. The Avar caused the price to rise by leaps and bounds, and threatened to become prohibitive. The photographers were not resigned to the threatened shortage of developers. ‘‘Come,” said they to the chemists, “get to Avork—produce ns pyrogallol and amidol.” In the Patents Office at Melbourne lay the specification of Julius Hauff's amidol, and hither a chemist's assistant hastened to peruse it. But. oh. the Avily Hun! All that the chemists knew, though they consulted the text-books, avhs that phenol, a coal tar product, could be so treated that amidol would bo produced. What they did not know Avere all the dctailes of quantities, temperatures, crystallisation, manipulation, and purification, which must be carefully observed if a pure article were to be produced. All this detail had to be Avorkod out, and it Avas Avorked out in the chemical laboratory if the Victorian Railways Department. There, among the beakers and burners, the gas generators, and Avater-baths, the ambition of the linns as represented by a patent taken out by Julius Hauff, of Stuttgart, for amidol, a chemical used in photography, has receive d a chock. Julius Hauff has lost his secret irrevocably, for Victorian Railways amidol \vill develop 10 prints to 9 de\ 7 eloped by the imported German article. What has thus been done in the laboratory can be done in the factory. A tentacle of the German octopus has been severed. Hitherto prrogallol has been used for developing plates only, but the departmental photographers have discoA'ci'iod a method of using it instead of amidol in print development. They sas r U is oA’en better than the amidol for tlm prints. Special apparatus is being designed, ro that the chemists may produce suffiicient pyogallol and amidol to make the departmental photo gra pliers independent of the market.